Nevada Allows Google's Self-Driving Car: Super or Scary?
SodaHead News
2012/05/10 13:00:00
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Google's been working on patenting a self-driving car for a while, and now it's fully licensed to drive. In Nevada, at least. According the The Associate Press, the car received a license to drive after demonstrating its safe driving on the Las Vegas Strip. For whatever reason, the license requires that two passengers be in the car while it's on auto-pilot, doubling the risk. On the other hand, it's the perfect solution for those worried about Google's Glass project.
DMV director Bruce Breslow explained, "They're designed to avoid distracted driving. When you're on the Strip and there's a huge truck with three scantily clad women on the side, the car only sees a box." Any drawbacks? He adds, "It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe." It sounds like an amazing invention, and so far it hasn't gotten into any accidents, but does a self-driving car sound a little scary to you?
DMV director Bruce Breslow explained, "They're designed to avoid distracted driving. When you're on the Strip and there's a huge truck with three scantily clad women on the side, the car only sees a box." Any drawbacks? He adds, "It gets honked at more often because it’s being safe." It sounds like an amazing invention, and so far it hasn't gotten into any accidents, but does a self-driving car sound a little scary to you?
Top Opinion
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Scary
+8Kinda scary, actually. I love technology, but as anyone who deals with emerging techologies on a daily basis can tell you (and I do), there are always glitches and unforseen problems and scenarios. Always. For something like navigating a high speed vehicle down a road with changing traffic, weather, and road conditions, I'm not comfortable handing the wheel over to a computer yet. Anyone who has experience with GPS navigators knows that they are frequently wrong about routes and other trip data.
Now.. who the heck wants a google big brother on top of the government.
Go ahead everyone tank your freedoms. Then you cry when freedoms are taken away even you gladly give them up.
Oh wait I have been driving since 16 and am now 50+ and not one accident. How long has this car been driving?
However I can see a future (20+ years) where all vehicles will be required to be robotically driven. Then the question becomes: is driving a right or a priviledge?
Still I don't want to give up my freedoms.... Doesn't google already own enough of your life?
Frankly I think the tech will become a great convenience. I would LIKE to be able to nap while my car drives me home from work.
I can see the convenience... but I would hate to have google have a monopoly on it.
Are we to bundle everyone up in bubble wrap?
I can see both good and bad. A self-drive car could probably get you killed, if another driver is intentionally out to get you. Would it have any evasive skills, as a chauffeur would, as we see in the movies? Or would it self-drive "perfectly," by the book, as some bad guy runs you off the road, or shoots at you? That's a problem with computers. Too many false assumptions. Too much inability to properly react, to unanticipated problems.
How do we know that the government doesn't have a back-door into the software? They put out a false warrant for your arrest, no due process, and you car just traps you and hauls you in? Or they shut down your cars remotely, during some phony government "false flag?" Or spy on your comings and goings without your knowledge?
Then there's the headaches of old models, and inability to get sufficient software upgrades.
Benefits include, far better traffic flow. As self-drive cars start reaching critical mass, saturation of the market, cars could flow faster, safer, even where traffic is congested. Sudden, panic stops would be moderated by super-fast reaction time, and by cars talking to one another. Imagine something happens, say some object falls off a truck, and all self-drive c...
I can see both good and bad. A self-drive car could probably get you killed, if another driver is intentionally out to get you. Would it have any evasive skills, as a chauffeur would, as we see in the movies? Or would it self-drive "perfectly," by the book, as some bad guy runs you off the road, or shoots at you? That's a problem with computers. Too many false assumptions. Too much inability to properly react, to unanticipated problems.
How do we know that the government doesn't have a back-door into the software? They put out a false warrant for your arrest, no due process, and you car just traps you and hauls you in? Or they shut down your cars remotely, during some phony government "false flag?" Or spy on your comings and goings without your knowledge?
Then there's the headaches of old models, and inability to get sufficient software upgrades.
Benefits include, far better traffic flow. As self-drive cars start reaching critical mass, saturation of the market, cars could flow faster, safer, even where traffic is congested. Sudden, panic stops would be moderated by super-fast reaction time, and by cars talking to one another. Imagine something happens, say some object falls off a truck, and all self-drive cars behind, all slow down, at the same time, to avoid any more "pile-up" accidents. The car wouldn't have to actually see it, for the self-drive car in front that did see it, would instantly broadcast the hazard and its exactly location, to all nearby self-drive cars. Hazard lights on all affected self-drive cars would instantly activate, to alert any cars out there that aren't yet self-drive. Imagine the news story that doesn't occur, when the pile-up doesn't happen.
There's a YouTube video, "Why we don't have flying cars yet," I think was the title. It's main point was that flying cars need to be self-drive. That way, drivers won't need to learn to be pilots, and there wouldn't be any reputation that flying cars then aren't safe. The car would be like its own chauffeur. Just tell it where you want to go, and it takes you there.
They say, just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean that they aren't really trying to get you. A definition of paranoia, is "heightened awareness."
You haven't seen movie after movie, warning of all the dangers of new technologies, if implicated in a bad way? Robots taking over the world? Dystopian awful futures? BTW, bomb-out movie sets, are a lot cheaper to design, than futuristic movie sets that look credible or realistic, or so I have heard.
So many inventions, we just take for granted, and yet they would have looked "like magic," even just a few decades ago? Who ever thought we would get YouTube videos of just about every disaster imaginable, just because of the prevalence of cellphones with tiny movie cameras built into them? Used to be, we only got pictures of the aftermath, when the news media showed up half an hour after it was over. Wasn't the video-phone, just the make-believe sci-fi nonsense of cartoons like The Jetsons? Anybody ever hear of GoToMeeting or Skype?
Just wait until we have "free energy," self-drive, flying cars. Your old car will seem to be such a "dinosaur" as that carved-out rock car on The Flintstones, that uses dragging feet, as the brakes.
You could get in your car, tell it where you wanted to go, and sit back and read the paper, or take a nap. People thought it was a great idea. And eith present Technollogy, could be very practicle in the near future.
You as well stick to you Horse and Buggy attitude while the world passes you by.
Me, I am aware of the advantages etc that this technology can bring down the road, and even in todays world. Would you have thought 10 years ago tha a car could parallel park itself?
Well the new fords can.
They will knock your eyes out. The government is saying that I think it's five years cars will have to get like 50mph.
And iin winter with the 10-15 % Winter blend of Ethanol, it drops to about 45-46 MPG.